The first time I heard the phrase
“Who’s your daddy?”
Because my young mind lives in my sexually abused body
I knew it wasn’t just an innocent query about who my father was.
As a young child who never really got to play pretend
With anybody but myself
I mastered the art of locking my skin in a bedroom
And conjuring my own playmates.
I remember the first time my dad left
To work in a place far enough for me not to reach him
I didn’t know that it was also the last time
That everything in my life was going to feel
Like how every little girl’s life should be
When I look back now,
I remember one post card from my dad
Wherein he told me to not be hard-headed
But mostly I remember moving to a new bed space with my mum
And sleeping on the floor, some nights without dinner
Some nights with my mum trying to not let me hear her crying.
I knew that I had nothing compared to my rich fair-skinned friends
And sometimes I asked God, why.
I was a small, petite girl who shouldn’t feel comfortable
having curse words buried beneath her tongue
But ended up the most badass out of their group
When she knew how to say ******* to every boy
Who teased her for having curly noodle hair and dark skin.

The next time I heard the phrase
“Who’s your daddy?”
I tried so hard to picture him smiling
But end up with the image of his new wife, with his new child
Smiling as if I never existed,
As if the part of his life that included us
Was just a manuscript that never got published.
As if I was a useless prologue to the actual novel
As if I was a vase of ashes of the daughter I used to be.

Now, when I hear the phrase
“Who’s your daddy?”
I try to reflect the question back into empty hollows of my belly
I try to look for the answer amongst the dust left
when my father ran away from me.
Stop asking me who or where my father is
Because I have no ******* idea
I try so hard to remember being an innocent little girl in her daddy’s arms
But all I get is the post card of him telling me to not be hard headed
But daddy, this is how you raised me!
No, scratch that this was how the streets raised me
Because you were never there.
Hard head and hard heart matching with thick skin
Maybe this is why I am so comfortable with hurting myself
Because if I can be hurt by my own father
Abused my own uncle
Left by all of the men in my life
And still live
Then why can’t I do it myself?
This is why no one can tell me that it is not in a woman’s blood
To be in the position of a man
Because my mother was able to transform into a father
Without a script yet the play the part so well.
So after all these years,
You have the nerve to message me on Facebook
Saying “I’m sorry, my child”
I try to surface goodness in my heart
But you have melted everything into a puddle of blood
That empties through my wrists
So now I am telling you
That I am letting you go
because you have no child here.